Peter Tscherkassky (born October 3, 1958) is an Austrian avant-garde filmmaker who works primarily with found footage. All of his work is done with

film A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

and heavily edited in the darkroom, rather than relying on recent advances in

digital film Digital cinematography is the process of capturing (recording) a motion picture using digital image sensors rather than through film stock. As digital technology has improved in recent years, this practice has become dominant. Since the 2000s, m ...

Early life

Tscherkassky was born October 3, 1958, in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

. He attended the Primary School in Mistelbach from 1965 to 1969 and Jesuit boarding school from 1969 to 1975 in Vienna. He attended BORG (high school) Mistelbach and graduated in June 1977. From 1977 to 1979 Tscherkassky studied journalism and political science as well as philosophy at the University of Vienna. His first encounter with avant-garde film was in January 1978 when he attended a five-day lecture series by P. Adams Sitney at the Austrian Film Museum.

Film career

Tscherkassky began filming in 1979 when he acquired Super-8 equipment and before the end of the year he had scripted and started off the shooting of ''Kreuzritter''. Throughout his career he conceived numerous film festivals, including “The Light of Periphery: Austrian Avant-Garde Film, 1957–1988” (1988), “Im Off der Geschichte” (1990), “Found Footage: Filme aus gefundenem Material” (1991), and “Unknown Territories: The American Independent Film” (1992). He was also the founding member of the newly Austria Filmmakers Cooperative which began in 1982 and resigned from his position there in 1993. His work ''Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine'' (2005) had its world premiere at the

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world. Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...

in the series "Quinzaine des réalisateurs."

Filmography

* ''Bloodletting'' (1981) * ''Erotique'' (1982) * ''Love Film'' (1982) * ''Freeze Frame'' (1983) * ''Holiday Movie'' (1983) * ''Miniaturen: Many Berlin Artists in Hoisdorf'' (1983) * ''Motion Piction'' (1984) * ''Manufracture'' (1985) * ''Kelimba'' (1986) * ''Shot Countershot'' (1987) * ''Tabula Rasa'' (1987/89) * ''Parallel Space: Inter-View'' (1992) * ''Happy-End'' (1996) * ''L'Arrivée'' (1997/98; using footage from ''

L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (translated from French into English as ''The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station'', ''Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat'' Sand ''The Arrival of the Mail Train'', and in the United Kingdom as ''Train Pulling into a Station'') is an 1896 Fren ...

'' (1896) by the Lumiere Brothers and ''

Mayerling Mayerling is a small village (pop. 200) in Lower Austria belonging to the municipality of Alland in the district of Baden (district of Austria), Baden. It is situated on the Schwechat river, in the Vienna Woods, Wienerwald (''Vienna woods''), so ...

'' (1968) by Terence Young) * ''Outer Space'' (1999; using footage from ''

The Entity ''The Entity'' is a 1982 American supernatural horror film directed by Sidney J. Furie, and starring Barbara Hershey, Ron Silver, David Labiosa, Maggie Blye, Jacqueline Brookes, and Alex Rocco. The film follows a single mother in Los Angel ...

'' (1982) by Sidney J. Furie) * ''Get Ready'' (1999) * ''Dream Work'' (2001; using the same film as ''Outer Space'') * ''Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine'' (2005; using footage from ''

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly ''The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'' (, literally "''The good, the ugly, the bad''") is a 1966 Italian epic spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood as "the Good", Lee Van Cleef as "the Bad", and Eli Wallach a ...

'' (1967) by

Sergio Leone Sergio Leone ( ; ; 3 January 1929 – 30 April 1989) was an Italian filmmaker, credited as the pioneer of the spaghetti Western genre. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema. Leone's film-making style ...

)CLOSE-UP, Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine
/ref> * ''Nachtstück (Nocturne)'' (2006) * ''Coming Attractions'' (2010) * ''The Exquisite Corpus'' (2015) * ''Train Again'' (2021)

Notes

References

Articles about Tscherkassky on Senses of Cinema
* Alexander Horwath, Michael Loebenstein (Ed.): ''Peter Tscherkassky'', FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen Vol. 2, Vienna 2005,
Dossier on Peter Tscherkassky by Matt Levine, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Virgil Widrich (César Ustarroz, ed.), in ''Found Footage Magazine'', issue#4, 2018. ISSN 2462-2885

External links